One of the main reasons that TikTok has enjoyed such cultural dominance is that it is way more addictive than any alternative that came before.

All of its competitors rushed to put out their own short-form video features after it rose to prominence, purely because it was undeniable how good it was at stealing away our time. A recent report by the European Commission only confirmed what we have all known about the clock app for years: the design of the platform is a devious invention tailor-made to convince us to keep on scrolling until we can’t anymore. It has come with an order that they change the way that the app works so that people spend less time on it, but it remains to be seen if any of these tweaks are going to be implemented.